


Always so fucking damn right.

by NineLuz



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Gen, Other, Platonic Relationships, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 15:33:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13126620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NineLuz/pseuds/NineLuz
Summary: A little AU-WW1 from German soldiers' perspective, fic with platonic Erwin/Levi/Hange. Expect pain, corpses, death and Christmas Truces.





	Always so fucking damn right.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first time I post anything on AO3. I participated into the Vet Secret Santa organized by [Alemanriq](http://alemanriq.tumblr.com). This is my gift to [Histcria](https://histcria.tumblr.com/) and I hope she will like it and I'm very anxious about it ahah!  
> I was corrected by my sweet [Glyphron](https://glyphron.tumblr.com) which gave me the courage to continue, finish and post it. So huge thanks to her.

Levi didn’t know why he had any hope. He was standing in front of the monument to the Dead, with Hange, waiting to give a letter to Erwin’s wife. They had traveled since the war and went to a little village, where no one knew them, to rebuild the life that was stolen from them. Erwin saved them, but for what price? His name was on the monument, with the name of many others that fought.

He remembers, that time, in 1915, when they didn’t think the war would last so long and be so hard. They made a truce with the French, they walked on no man’s land and shared a meal, a handshake, a song, with them. It was Christmas, they couldn’t be with their families, so they became one. It was during the first truce he met Erwin and Hange. They were close already, because he was an officer, and they were medics. Nobody really figured out what kind of people they were because of their eccentricity, maybe that’s why Erwin was so interested.

Levi was strange too. He didn’t like talking to people, even less to the French, because he knew he would kill them the next week. He would see their eyes and mouth opened, filled with filthy dirt and dead. He didn’t want to be friends with them, he wanted the war to stop. Erwin saw it, and he tried a few times to push him onto others, until he realized he wouldn’t be able to. That nobody would change his mind. Erwin, this dumb fucker thought that the war had meaning, that the reason they fought was good, Levi followed him, as they all did. He was a good leader.

“You’re very quiet Levi,” Hange comments, looking at him. “Well you’re so fucking loud all the time.” Levi tried so hard to not make any friend in this, because he knew, he damned well knew he would lose them all. He made the mistake with Farlan the first year of hell, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake with Hange and Erwin. But he did. And now, Farlan and Erwin hurt so bad. Hange was still here, thanks to him. The only person he has left.

 

The Christmas truce, he tried too, the next year. It became some kind of silly tradition there. They could all hear the guns in other fields, but they still made peace with the French. It was some hypocritical shit, but Erwin kept saying it was “good for the moral of the soldiers”. And you can’t argue with that, with Erwin. Because when you see him lead and succeed into getting ground and push back the French for months, well, you know Erwin is always right. “So fucking damn right all the time,” he mutters between his lips. Hange seems to understand, they laugh a bit “Yeah… He was.” A sad laugh. Erwin was always right. Except for the last time they saw him.

They all sat in the biggest room they had, on the French side. There was a singer making loud noises and, that time, Levi was next to Erwin and Hange. They all ate and drank, and it was… Fun. Levi never had something looking like a family, but at that time, he felt his insides burning, and it wasn’t just the alcohol. “Are you enjoying your night Levi?” Erwin asks, and Levi just hisses, “You don’t fucking care if I enjoy it or not,” he doesn’t like hypocrites. The drunk blond raises an eyebrow and comes closer, he smiles, “Oooooooh I think you aaaaaare.” Hange laughs, they’re so drunk, both of them. Levi thinks he’s a snake that night. But it turned out that, he just looks like one.

Levi had cried so much since then. He looked at himself in the mirror, with those new scars, those new memories, and he regretted that he couldn’t go back. Yes, back to war. Back to blood, back to those dead people lying around for days. Smelling corpses and mud. Back to hell. But back to his friends. Hange and Levi had a peaceful life now, with a house where they could grow crops. He never showed his tears to anyone, not even Hange, it was too shameful, too raw. But looking at the monument, he thinks it always will be.

 

“I’m sorry Levi,” he said. Levi was in Erwin’s office, and in an assault, they just lost Farlan. Just like that. A bombshell exploded in their trenches. In one heartbeat he was just gone, like he never existed. “What about Isabel? He was the only thing she had, and now he’s gone! He’s fucking gone because of that shitty war!” he left and, since he had nothing to do, he cleaned. He cleaned everything, he brought back corpses in the trenches, and put them into a pile they would bury after. He picked their collars, and brought them back to Erwin so he could do his damn paperwork.

With the years, Levi got close to Erwin, he was captain of a team, and they had to talk daily. At first he didn’t like that. But each time a truce was held, because of important holidays, he would get a closer look at who Erwin really was. Hange too. But, it was because they would never leave him alone and were extremely loud around him. Levi looks at Hange now and sighs. At least it was better than the silence of the moment after a bomb. Hange brings life, and that’s more than most of Levi’s friends. He'd gotten hit more than once, and sometimes knocked out, but Hange’s voice was always the first thing he would hear. It was unpleasant at first, but now it feels like home.

 

In 1918, Levi emerged from another aching sleep dealt by a wound to his left leg. He heard Hange’s voice, but it wasn’t the only one. Erwin looked tired and stern, Levi’s eyes were closed but he could picture it in his mind from the way they were talking. Erwin’s big eyebrows close to his blue eyes, concerned, serious. “You both have to leave” he said. Hange and Erwin fought a bit, because they didn’t feel like they should go. Levi wasn’t strong enough to talk thanks to the medication they had given him, so he just listened. “We’re losing.”

“No. We won’t. We’re not done, and we’ve come further into French territory than we ever had before!” Hange tried, but Erwin was unconvinced. “We are losing. We moved too far South. They are going to choke us from every side. We are alone in this. You have to go. I’ll tell Levi when he wakes up.” Levi felt himself drifting again to sleep, because it was better to sleep than to understand that everything they had done, was for nothing.

Levi woke up during the night, he looked at Hange snoring in a chair next to him. He sat up straight in bed, before looking at Erwin who was reading some dumb papers in a chair on the other side of the bed. All he'd done this whole time was paperwork. As it turned out he did that for nothing. The man drifted his stare up from his papers to Levi, “You’re finally up.” He began, coldly, detached. As if they weren’t in the middle of a losing war, as if it were normal. For some reason Levi felt angrier, “What the fuck did you tell Hange before? I heard, we’re fucked?” Farlan died for nothing. All those bodies, buried for nothing. All those injuries, those men who lost limbs, who lost their minds…

Nothing.

_Nothing_.

**… Nothing**.

“Why? Why did we do all of this...”

It didn’t sound like a question, and it looked like Erwin had to think about the answer. “Because it’s what we had to do. We took what was rightfully ours. To show that we’re a powerful nation, that our country is -” “TO HELL WITH THAT!” Levi shouted, lunging onto Erwin, both of them falling from the chair to the ground.

“What the hell Levi?!” Hange was apparently startled by all the mess. The pain in his left leg was bad, but choking his superior at that moment felt like the only way to make everything better. Erwin didn’t try anything, he just looked at him with his dead blue eyes, as if he’d never wished anything more than to die by the hand of one of his soldiers. “Fuck you. Fuck all of this.” Levi closed his hand tight around Erwin’s throat. And, he wanted to kill him, to make everything stop. To make the endless pain stop. To make all those bodies, the death, the war, stop.

“They all died… For nothing. You sent them to their deaths... For nothing.” He felt his eyes burning from the tears, remembering those Christmas truces. They all died, bloody mouths open, faces scarred, limbs missing. “This country is shit. Those leaders are shit. You are shit, Erwin. War is shit.” Hange took Levi by the arm “Stop, it won’t bring them back.” Hange was serious too, and somehow it made Levi desperately sad. “Fuck you.” He let Erwin go, and came back to the bed with the help of the medic.

Levi didn’t want to look at Erwin anymore because, he was afraid he would cry. He looked at his feet instead. “I’m sorry Levi,” Erwin said, rubbing his neck, before getting up and replacing the chair, “this is why you two need to leave tomorrow morning. You’ll have a little opening, you’ll go back to Germany and stay hidden until it’s over.” “What about you?” Erwin smiled, Levi could hear it with his answer, “I’m not leaving my soldiers. I’ll stay,” he whispers, “But I’ll survive… We’ll meet again Levi, Hange.”

So they left. Erwin made sure to give them a bag with water, food, and the letter to his wife. Hange carried Levi as much as possible and after some days hiding and walking, they finally reached the border. They struggled to get into the country, but after that it was easy. They tried to stay away from big cities and found a village that didn’t mind having two weirdos in it. Erwin was right, as always, Germany did loose and, apparently, many soldiers fled from the ranks of the army. All of that for nothing, everything was lost. Winners dictated the new rules of the country, which only made people eager to fight. No money, no food, nothing.

 

Now they’re in front of the monument to the Dead. Erwin had been wrong about surviving. The war seemed like another life, Levi sounds and looks like another person, and he still struggles to walk long distances. Due to his damned leg. Hange is the same, suffering from insomnia. Getting up in the middle of the night after terrible nightmares, or sometimes screaming from them like they were killing Hange. It was hard, but they were alive. Is that better than to finally rest forever in death? He doesn’t know.

A woman, mourning the dead, approaches the monument. Her blond hair falling on her shoulders, her head hidden by a black hat. She places flowers on the ground, joining her hands on her heart to make a prayer. Levi recognizes her immediately. Erwin talked a lot about Marie, and he could agree with him now, that she was, indeed, a beautiful woman. Hange and Levi get up, realizing, at the same time, who she is. And Hange moves closer to her. “Marie is it? This…” Hange gives her the letter, “… is from your husband.”

The woman, who looks so young, takes the letter in both her hands and smiles, “So it’s you.” She considers them both, before saying, “I am glad to meet you, finally. Erwin talked a lot about you. Hange and… Levi, is it?” She stares at the letter, “Thank you.” Levi is shocked at how at peace she is, and he feels a little bit angry about this. He can’t stop himself from feeling sad over Erwin, even though he deserved to die. He just turns his head away, “No problem.”

They came here, all this way, just to deliver a letter, which was dumb to do to begin with. And then, they meet the girl, his wife, and she’s at peace as if nothing had ever happened. As if she wasn’t mourning. It’s unsettling, it’s fucking sick. They were all dead for nothing and nobody seems to give a fuck about that. Flowers don’t bring back the dead. Marie finally puts her letter into a little bag she was carrying, “please, come to my house for coffee, it must have been a long journey, and someone wishes to see you.” She begins to walk away from the monument, and Levi hasn’t the time to wonder who the fuck could still be alive to see them.

A few feet from where Hange and him stand, a tall man with blue eyes, blond hair, black top hat, and a cane is standing. He smiles and tilts his hat. His eyes are sad but familiar. The burning feeling of Levi’s heart from Christmas returns, as if it never disappeared.

“ERWIN YOU’RE ALIVE!”

So fucking loud, but Levi can’t help but smile.  
He feels whole again.

…  
Erwin was always so fucking damn right.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey it's me again!  
> I enjoyed writing this fic, and I think it's a big step for me to finally publish something to the English community (I'm a French writer). It's maybe not a very big deal, but for me it is!  
> Don't hesitate to leave a comment, I'll be pleased about that and it'll be the equivalent of a Christmas gift. :3


End file.
